Every week for months now, the federal government agencies responsible for key airport operations, that have been held at least partly to blame for a summer season of air travel chaos, have issued ‘self-report cards,’ as Open Jaw has been calling them.
These weekly reports from Ottawa have been largely self-congratulatory. They routinely cite the many actions, from hiring sprees, to industry collaboration, that the government has undertaken to get travellers and aircraft moving smoothly in and out of the nation’s airports.
Airports, Open Jaw notes, which have ranked among the worst in the world this summer for flight delays and cancellations.
While admitting air travel chaos has been “unacceptable,” Canada’s Transport Minister, Omar Alghabra, has also claimed progress in the reduction of delayed and cancelled flights. At a recent news conference, he told media that, “The data show we are moving closer and closer to pre-pandemic” performance.
But now, the Globe and Mail reports that the government’s self-proclaimed progress might involve some proverbial cooking of the books.
The 01SEP ‘self-report card’ from the government announced that, for example, during the week of 22AUG to 28AUG, 86 per cent of flights at Canada’s four biggest international airports departed “on time.”
Which Ottawa’s statement then defined as: “or within one hour of their scheduled departure.”
But industry experts note that an hour late is not “on time.” Former operations chief at Air Canada, Duncan Dee, told the Globe that the one-hour metric is “misleading and farcical,” adding, “It’s not something that’s done anywhere on the planet.”
The internationally-accepted standard measurement of an “on-time” departure is within 15 minutes of a flight’s scheduled time, he explained.
James Hetzel, an analyst with Cirium, an aviation analytics company based in Britain, agrees, telling the Globe, “Delays greater than 15 minutes are considered a long delay and have consequences on downstream flights.”
According to Cirium, the actual on-time performance at Canada’s busiest airports is much worse than Ottawa’s reported "86 per cent." Its own data shows that in the same week beginning 22AUG, the percentage of flights departing on time was actually:
- 55 per cent at YYZ;
- 53 per cent at YUL;
- 61 per cent at YVR; and
- 73 per cent at YYC.
Overall for the summer, between MAY and SEP, 52 per cent of flights at YYZ were not ‘on time,’ according to aviation tracking web site FlightAware, making Pearson the worst performing airport in the world, with YUL coming in a close second at 48 per cent.
It’s not just the apparent government deception of the public, but also, as Dee explains, Ottawa’s slack, one-hour standard lets government security and border staff off the hook for poor performance.
This comes as the federal government’s updated Regulations Amending the Air Passenger Protection Regulations took effect 08SEP. Under the new rules, airlines are solely responsible for compensating pax for delayed and cancelled flights, even when the cause is not within the airline’s control.
As Open Jaw has reported, Canada’s carriers have asked the federal government to institute service standards for other entities they say should also bear responsibility for flight delays and cancellations, including security and border screening and airport operations.
